GIT – merge selective files

where: branchX is the branch you want to merge from into the current branch

The --no-commit option will stage the files that have been merged by Git without actually committing them. This will give you the opportunity to modify the merged files however you want to and then commit them yourself.

Depending on how you want to merge files, there are four cases:

1) You want a true merge. In this case, you accept the merged files the way Git merged them automatically and then commit them.

2) There are some files you don’t want to merge. For example, you want to retain the version in the current branch and ignore the version in the branch you are merging from.

To select the version in the current branch, run:

git checkout HEAD file1

This will retrieve the version of file1 in the current branch and overwrite the file automerged by Git.

3) If you want the version in branchX (and not a true merge), run:

git checkout branchX file1

This will retrieve the version of file1 in branchX and overwrite the file auto-merged by Git.

4) The last case is if you want to select only specific merges in file1. In this case, you can edit the modified file1 directly, update it to whatever you’d want the version of file1 to become, and then commit.

If Git cannot merge a file automatically, it will report it as “unmerged” file and produce a copy where you will need to resolve the conflicts manually.

To explain further with an example, let’s say you want to merge branchX into the current branch:

git merge --no-ff --no-commit branchX

You then run the git status command to view the status of modified files.

If you find some merge undesirable, you can edit the file directly, save, and then commit.

If you don’t want to merge file1 and want to retain the version in the current branch, run:

git checkout HEAD file1

If you don’t want to merge file2 and only want the version in branchX, run

git checkout branchX file2

If you want file3 to be merged automatically, don’t do anything. Git has already merged it at this point.

file4 above is a failed merge by Git. This means there are changes in both branches that occur on the same line. This is where you will need to resolve the conflicts manually. You can discard the merged done by editing the file directly or running the checkout command for the version in the branch you want file4 to become.